Rainy day…

Well I would go out, but it’s raining and windy, so I think I’ll stay indoors. It looks horrible out there. What should I do I wonder? I could have a little sleep I suppose, or I could play a game of charging around, I like playing charging around - up the stairs, around the bedrooms, up the curtains, across the hall, onto the sideboard, on top of the Teleboxthing, into the kitchen, under the table, and then some nice nin-nins as a charging around reward.

There that’s my day sorted – a game of charging around, some nin-nins, and a nice long sleep. Who needs the outside anyway? Just look at that rain.

Two minutes on Haiku…

white sun stings the eye

black swallow soars hunter high

flat to ground I fly

I don’t know whether a Haiku should rhyme or not, I’m told that it shouldn’t but then I’ve also always been told that a Haiku should be composed of three lines, the first having five syllables, the second seven, and the third and final line five…

on my back beneath

black swallow soars hunter high

surrounded in light

The word Haiku comes from the Japanese meaning ‘Light Verse.’ In Japanese Haiku are written in a single vertical line, so not three lines at all, and using seventeen sound units or mora which I’m told aren’t the same as syllables, although quite what they are though seems hard to define…

above me a bird catches light on the wing as my eye follows

You’ll have to imagine the above in vertical. To make it even more complicated English is a stressed language (no wonder with all these Haiku complications), and ideas can simply be expressed with just a short line, followed by a long line, and then another short line – so no need for syllable, mora, verticals, or unit counts at all…

laid down beneath

black swallow soars his hunting high

and in his eye I fly

Better, but all in all, complicated. But I may just keep working on it, even if it is really easy to make a cheesy Haiku (no, I’m not going to try, although you may think I already have).

After all, how can you go wrong when the masters of the genre had names that sound like the Japanes equivalent of the seven dwarves – Shiki, Buson and Basho, to name but three. So there you have it; Haiku in two minutes – Haiku! (bless me).

Note to myself: Perhaps I’ll call myself Bluto, or was that a different cartoon?

Seaweed...

Nature arranges her own works of art, creating such beautiful jewellery for mermaids to wear. Just look at this, it’s truly fantastic. I defy anybody to arrange those swirls in such a perfectly fluid and natural way, even the sand echoes them.

I’ve never understood most people’s reluctance to go near seaweed, ‘Stay away from the weed!’, my Mum used to shout on our beach summer holidays. I didn’t though; the weed was such fun, even if it was a little smelly and slimy. I would collect the delicate red fronded weed and float it in a saucer, inserting paper underneath so that it stuck, making a picture when dry. The green lettuce weed looked great on top of the sandcastles we made, and of course, in the days before bubble wrap, bladder rack was a great substitute.

I knew that seaweed could be dangerous though. I’d read about the weed in the Sargasso, long thick strands that clogged the propellers of Chinese merchants, dragging them down to the depths of Davy Jones’ locker, and seaweed is where the sea monsters hide, it’s full of them, everybody knows that. Sometimes they even get washed up on the water’s edge.

Moonwart, Livelong, and Wall Peppers...

I love the way that some plants spring up wherever they like, clinging to walls, growing in gutters, survivors clinging to any tiny hold they can.

Moonwort grows everywhere in Wales, its creamy yellow flowers, waxy and smooth, could me made from that fabled moon cheese we all knew so well as children. On clear moonlit nights I wonder if the man in the moon drifts down to pick them.

Any crack or crevice in any wall is an opportunity for the Livelong and Wall Peppers. Give them an inch and they’ll take a yard, filling the space with a riot of life and randomness, making their own miniature world on a rock or two.

Moonwort, Livelong, Wall Pepper. Which herb gathering, old Granny named these I wonder and for what purpose - to make us smile, give us hope, to mix in potions to make us fly, get better, sicken, fall in love, make a good harvest?

Clinging to the rock and thriving can’t be easy but somehow they manage it. What a trick.

Beach findings...

We went in search of beach on Saturday and found it off to the left down a tiny side road over Harlech way. Stopping every half mile or so to reverse back, letting other beach searchers pass, we wondered if they’d found what they were looking for or were coming back disappointed from a dead end.

It was no dead end. Sometimes I can’t believe that these places aren’t signposted, they rarely are, you just happen across them by chance.

Huge dunes stretched before us as we parked the car and walked along the winding, wooden, walkway through the grass covered dunes. We knew it was going to be special before we got there and it was, the wide beach stretched before us for miles as we emerged from the dunes, the sun sparkling on the white tipped waves. We’d found what we were looking for.

The beach, almost empty despite such a beautiful day, was clear and clean, with almost no break to the flat expanse of sand. No plastic bottles, no cans, but there’s always something washed up by the waves, so we went for a wander, eyes glued to the ground, looking for finds.

Now a find can be anything, a crab’s leg, a shell, an interesting pebble, a piece of driftwood, a feather – finding finds isn’t hard, and once found they can’t be left behind.

This time it was iridescent oyster shells, a small collection, a memory of a beach.

Misty does the ironing...

I don’t now why Foodies says that she hates ironing. I like it, even though I don’t really know what it is. I do know that it is another of those things that she does with hissing clothes though.

Clothes seem such a bother – I don’t know how they can be troubled wearing them. But this time she isn’t making them wet so that she can hang them on that weather machine outside, this time it seems to be about stroking them with this funny looking thing while they lie flat on this silly collapsible bed. Mind you, this bed is very comfortable and you can see all around from up here - it’s nice and warm too, very snug, all cosy.

I wonder if this blue and silver thing is a mechanical cat and she uses it to stoke the clothes to make them happy, like she strokes me to make me happy. I haven’t heard it purr though, although I have heard it hissing hissing and seen it spit, so it can’t be very happy about being used as a clothes stroker.

Maybe if I lie next to it, pretending to be one of whatever it is, Foodies will pick me up to stroke the clothes with. I wouldn’t mind that, I’d find it quite fun – and it’d be a good trick to startle Foodies with. I can just see here face when I purr instead of hissing and spitting.

I think I’ll just lie here quietly and see what happens. She’ll never know the difference.

Set on sand…

I came across a boat, blue, white, and set on sand. Not washed away, but waiting, tethered by a rusted chain. Bit by bitter bit, not little by little, bit by broken bit, wanting washed away. Aground and chained, and waiting to mend, to rust, to bend, to snap, set free, and sail away .

So standing, thinking out to blue, better stormy sea than stood set sand, the longest chains will bend to snap, and broken boats will fix to float - I knew.